This Time Around
by Mirrankei
Summary: For a long time, the only thing Bart can hear is his own breath and Jaime's. His is shallow and fast, trying not to show how much pain he's in. His head just won't clear, every movement feels like a sledgehammer to the back of his skull, but he has to be strong. Jaime's breath is slow but hitches every now and then, like he's trying to subdue sobs. They are really, totally, moded.


It's dark when Impulse wakes up. Like, really super uncool oppressive dark. His head hurts like he can't believe and he thinks he can feel some blood in his hair, making it all sticky and it makes unpleasant crunchy sounds when he tries to lift his head.

Someone holds him down. There's a hand supporting his head and another gently pushing his chest so he can't get up. For a second, Bart's heart is beating so hard and so fast even he can't hear anything but a steady hum, but before the panic can really set in, Jaime whispers to him.

"Shh, calm down, hermano. We need to be quiet."

"Blue?" Impulse shudders involuntarily when he tries to move again. Whatever's wrong with his head is affecting his motor skills. "What's going on? What happened?"

"We were attacked, ese. Ambushed."

"N-no," Impulse mutters. "We won, didn't we?"

"We did," Jaime agrees. He sounds angry, scared. "At first. But as soon as we beat Mongol we were attacked. By the Reach."

Impulse can feel his whole body tense up again. "N-no! Totally not crash, dude, where is everybody? What happened?"

"Stop moving, hermano!" Blue Beetle hisses at him. "You have a bad concussion, I think. I don't know if it's safe for you to be moving around."

"But the others...?"

Jaime pauses before answering. "I don't know. Most likely, captured. Or hiding in some other closet, like we are." He sounds positively disgusted with himself. "I... I ran away. It was the only thing I could do. We were losing, ese. Badly. I can't beat Black Beetle without the Scarab's help. I can't do it if I'm... off-mode. I couldn't save anyone else. I just grabbed you and ran."

Impulse strains but manages to raise his hand up over his head. It meets Jaime's face; still bearing armor. His hand settles on what he thinks is Blue Beetle's cheek and shuts his eyes, though it makes no difference when no light can filter through the alien doors. "Not your fault, hermano. Y-you did what you could." He swallows heavily, trying not to panic, not to cry. "So what's the plan then? Just wait for help from Nightwing? Strategize and do a two-man attack against an entire spacefleet and the War World? No problem."

"Just stay still for now," Jaime mutters. He runs an armored hand through Bart's hair; it gets stuck in a tangle and Bart flinches as it pulls against his scalp. "Concentrate on getting better."

"Right," Impulse mutters, torn between relief and more fear. "No problem. With my speedster genes I'll be better in no time. Then we'll kick some alien butt, right Jaime?"

"Right," Jaime says. It sounds forced, but Bart ignores it.

For a long time, the only thing Bart can hear is his own breath and Jaime's. His is shallow and fast, trying not to show how much pain he's really in. His head just won't clear, every movement feels like a sledgehammer to the back of his skull, but he has to be strong. Jaime's breath is slow but hitches every now and then, like he's trying to subdue sobs. They are really, totally, and completely moded, aren't they?

More minutes pass in silence. Jaime startles a little. "Bart?"

"Ngh?" Bart manages to make an affirmative sort of sound, but it's difficult. The pain is unbearable, he just wants to drift off to sleep.

"Bart, you need to stay awake. I don't know much about concussions but that's what they always say on TV, right? Stay with me, hermano, I need you."

"I'm here, I'm here," Impulse assures him. But it's getting harder to stay awake. The room is quiet, he's lying down, he even has a pillow of Jaime's knees.

"Stay awake, Impulse. Talk to me."

"Talk?" Impulse laughs. "Thought we were supposed to be quiet. Don't wanna get discovered."

"Don't want you to lose consciousness again either, ese. Keep talking to me."

"Talk," Impulse repeats. He swallows something gross in his throat. "About what."

"I don't know. Anything." There's silence as Bart grasps for something to talk about, but Jaime speaks up again before he comes up with anything. "Tell me about where you come from. Your future."

"I don't think you wanna hear about that, Jaime."

"No, tell me." His voice has become harder, more determined. It's still quiet, not loud enough to be heard through the walls, but the authority in it makes Bart flinch, and somewhere in the back of his mind he expects a mild shock to his neck, for Jaime to address him as _meat_ or _slave_. Jaime continues as if he doesn't notice, though; "Maybe the more we know about the future, the more ways we can stop it from happening. We can't let them win here, ese, we need all the help we can get."

"All right," says Bart reluctantly. "Whatever you say, boss. What did you want to know?"

"I don't know," Jaime says. "Um. Tell me how the Reach took over in the first place."

"I don't know all that much," Bart says with a sigh. "It was so long ago. It happened before I was born – before my parents were even born. But I guess you know that already."

"Mm."

"I guess... I guess it was the same as it is now. They used to talk about how the Reach had betrayed us, you know? They had come in as friends and then it turned out they just wanted us for, I dunno, resources. The metagenes as weapons, the planet's natural resources, even just plain slave labor. We were all slaves, doing hard labor for the Reach, didn't matter your gender or age or physical condition."

Bart shudders a little at the memory. Jaime runs his fingers through his hair again. "Why didn't you run?"

"They had the collars, hermano. No superpowers, no escape. And I was lucky, they didn't seem to know or care about mine. Otherwise I might have ended up as one of their guinea pigs, or a weapon. But I mean, even so, the inhibitor collar probably helped keep me alive. There was never nearly enough food for a speedster metabolism, you know. When I first got the collar off, I thought I might die."

"How'd you even get it off?"

Bart sighs and presses a hand to his forehead. "That would have been Nathaniel."

Jaime pulls Bart's hand back away from his head and places it patiently at his side. "Who's Nathaniel?"

"One of the Reach's early experiments. Like, trial phase. They forced superpowers onto him, started calling him Neutron, sent him out to kill my grandfather. Succeeded too. That was the first thing I had to change when I got back; Nathaniel was like a second father to me, I wanted to help him any way I could, and, well, I never knew Barry. I wanted him to live. Anyway, the control thingy the Reach had on Neutron – not a collar, it was something they attached to him biologically or something – it wore out. Crashed, actually. Left Nathaniel with no powers, but also with control over his mind. Off-mode. Get it?"

"Kind of," Jaime says. "So is he the one who gave you the time machine?"

"No way, hermano. I built the time machine. Nathaniel helped, but most of the work was mine. Did my work for the Reach during the day, picked up scraps that seemed to fit the blueprints, stuck 'em all together. Neutron helped, but he was mostly busy kind of... protecting me. We had other allies too, but I lost track of most of them. A lot were probably killed."

Bart squeezes his eyes as closed as they can go, but he can still feel the salty water leak out of them, dripping down his cheeks and collecting along the sides of his goggles. "My whole family, Jaime. I lost track of them, every single one. Except my cousin Wally, I watched y– them gun him down, and I ran. Faster than I'd ever gone. I hadn't ever thought I'd be able to run faster than Kid Flash, but in an emergency, you know..."

Jaime doesn't answer for a long moment. He just squeezes Bart's hand tenderly, letting him know he is there for him. Bart squeezes back, relieved for the silence. It hurts too much. If he could, he would just joke his way out of this, get Jaime psyched up for escaping or rescuing the others, but the pain in the back of his head is too much for him to focus on happy thoughts.

After a couple of minutes, Jaime speaks again. "So if you didn't design the time machine, where did you learn to build it?"

"It was mostly abandoned research in the remains of various League hideouts," Bart says. "Stuff left by someone named Booster Gold, mostly, and some scientists he worked with. Gold didn't really keep notes, but the first Beetle, Ted Kord, he did. And some of the people he worked with archived it. Some years after the Reach took over, when it was looking more hopeless than ever, I think they got the idea to go back and change history. It was Tim – that is, Robin, sorry, secret identity – he's the one who did most of the putting it together. I don't know what had happened to the rest of the Team, and I never actually met him in person, but I heard stuff from the other people who were part of Neutron's rebellion."

"Wow," says Jaime. "You wouldn't think he had it in him, looking at him now."

"Time changes you," Bart says quietly. "And losing the people you care about, even more so."

It's silent again, for a minute, two minutes, an hour; Impulse can't tell. His mind is stuck in the past, or the future, whatever. He snaps back to the present with a strong shudder. He curls in on himself, trying to roll himself onto his side but he doesn't really notice when Beetle holds him down, still cradling his head.

"I can't go through all that again, ese," Bart whispers. He's holding back sobs, not very effectively, silently bawling and filling his goggles that are useless in this darkness with more tears. "You don't know what it's like, nothing we've faced yet has even come close. It's just living in helplessness, Jaime. The sky rains ashes. The people you care about disappear, everyone dies. I don't want to lose anyone else, Jaime, not you or the Team or Jay and Joan and Barry and Wally and –"

"Shh, ese," Jaime whispers soothingly. Bart is straight up crying now, but Jaime just pets his arm once in a soothing motion before letting go, reaching for something on the floor. "It's going to be different this time. None of that's going to happen."

"How do you know?"

"We're going to stop it." Jaime's hand finally lets go of the back of Bart's head, and for a second, Impulse can see stars. The relief of the pressure hurts, but it clears his head more than it's been this entire time, and he gasps. Jaime brushes his hair up, away from his neck, and his other hand touches it gently. Something makes a snapping sound, then a beep, and suddenly red light – orange through his goggles – bursts into life, just outside Bart's field of vision. Everything is suddenly in slow motion. "The killing, the losses. The rebellion. None of that needs to happen. Nobody else is going to make a time machine."

"Jaime!" Bart begins to protest. He tries to push himself up, but his head swims and it all still hurts.

Jaime ignores the outburst and puts Impulse's head gently on the ground as he stands. He walks a couple of paces, stepping over Impulse on the way, and places his hand against the wall. There's a whooshing sound; the wall disappears and light flows in, making Bart flinch and yelp in pain at the sudden change.

Jaime is still in full armor, and he doesn't turn to look at Bart. His attention is on the people outside the door – the aliens, the Reach soldiers standing right outside, waiting. They carry weapons, but they don't leap into action. They just look up at the Blue Beetle.

"I have everything I need," says the Beetle. "You may take the Impulse to the medical bay to get patched up, then return him to the scientists. His metagene may yet be useful. And keep the Impulse at half rations; in the event a breakout does occur, he will be too weak to use his powers. You, send troops to destroy the Neutron; we no longer have any use for the meat and his presence poses a threat."

"Sir," says one of the Reach with a salute, and he walks briskly away, down the bright hall.

"Sir," says another. "What about the Robin? The information you extracted implies he is a threat as well."

"Negative, he is already in our custody. Even without a metagene, he remains a useful asset; when the Nightwing inevitably stages his rescue attempt, he will make a particularly effective hostage."

"Jaime!"

This time the shout is more of a howl of anguish, and though he's moving slow, too slow, Impulse manages to tackle the Blue Beetle when his back is turned. Jaime hardly stumbles, and he catches Bart with hurtfully gentle arms, holds him still without harming him any further. Impulse sobs again, goes limp in the Beetle's powerful grip.

"Jaime, you can't! Come back, you can beat the Scarab, Jaime, just keep trying. Crash the mode dammit, you have to!"

"Hush, hermano," the Beetle says, and it sounds so painfully like Jaime. His voice is firm but gentle, like he's chastising a petulant child. "Everything will be better this time, wait and see. You won't have to go through it all again. You're on our side this time, ese; as long as you cooperate, you'll be fine. And everyone else, too. We don't want war with the metahumans, we want alliance. You'll see."

"And everyone else, Jaime? Listen to what you're saying!"

"So long as there is no resistance, no harm will come to anybody. It will be better, Bart. This time around."

"No," Bart says, and he's trying to pound on the Beetle's chest, but Jaime is holding his wrists and one of the Reach comes closer with some kind of syringe. When it pierces his skin he starts to go numb, rippling out from the injection like a pebble in a pond, but he's still staring up into the Beetle's eyes, searching desperately for some sign of his friend. "You have to fight it, Jaime! Please, please..."

Impulse's eyes flutter shut and he falls limply into Jaime's arms. He passes the boy gently to one of his soldiers, who is neither gentle nor quite large enough to carry him effectively, but Bart is too far gone to feel the jostling and discomfort.

"Take him to the medical lab," the Beetle repeats, and he turns to walk the other way without looking back. "I must report to my brothers and tell them what I have learned. And be sure to keep the Impulse alive, I may yet have need for further interrogation."

The Reach salute to his retreating back. One puts his hand out and shuts the door to the darkened room, shuts off the viewscreen beside it and its speaker. They walk away, Impulse haphazardly carried behind them.


End file.
